lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man, against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour common errors. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy,* utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed.†

* Copy, i. e. copiousness.

+1 have retrieved this address (which is not in the folios) from the 4to. 1612. It is a spirited composition, and every way worthy of the author, whose prose, I think with that shrewd old critic, E. Bolton, to be the best of the time. Had the commentators on Shakspeare (the enemies of our author) been aware of the existence of this little piece, they would have derived excellent materials from it for the display of "much clumsy sarcasm."

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Subtle, the ALCHEMIST.
Face, the house-keeper.
Dol Common, their colleague.
Dapper, a lawyer's clerk.
Drugger, a tobacco-man.

Lovewit, master of the house.

Sir Epicure Mammon, a knight.

Pertinax Surly, a gamester.

Tribulation Wholesome, a pastor of Amsterdam. Ananias, a deacon there.

Kastrill, the angry boy.

Dame Pliant, his sister, a widow.

Neighbours.

Officers, Attendants, &c.

SCENE, London.

THE

ALCHEMIST.

ARGUMENT.

The sickness hot, a master quit, for fear,
His house in town, and left one servant there;
E ase him corrupted, and gave means to know

A Cheater, and his punk; who now brought low,
Leaving their narrow practice, were become
Cozeners at large; and only wanting some
House to set up, with him they here contract,
E ach for a share, and all begin to act.
Much company they draw, and much abuse,
In casting figures, telling fortunes, news,
Selling of flies, flat bawdry with the stone,
Till it, and they, and all in fume are gone.

2 The sickness hot, &c.] This, as has been already observed, was the term in use for that species of plague with which London was so frequently afflicted in the 16th and 17th centuries. On the first decisive symptoms, the alarm became general, and all who could, hastened into the country, leaving their houses in the charge of some confidential servant. Lilly tells us, in the history of his life, that he was left, in 1625,"to take care of his master's house, which had much money and plate in it." He appears to have spent his time in frivolous dissipations; "for 64 ease corrupted him" also, though it did not make him quite as profligate as Face.

3 Selling of flies,] i. c. of familiar spirits. See p. 25.

VOL. IV.

C

PROLOGUE.

Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours We wish away, both for your sakes and ours, Judging spectators; and desire, in place,

To th' author justice, to ourselves but grace. Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known, No country's mirth is better than our own: No clime breeds better matter for your whore, Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the stage; And which have still been subject for the rage Or spleen of comic writers. Though this pen Did never aim to grieve, but better men; Howe'er the age he lives in doth endure

The vices that she breeds, above their cure. But when the wholesome remedies are sweet, And in their working gain and profit meet, He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased, But will with such fair correctives be pleased: For here he doth not fear who can apply. If there be any that will sit so nigh Unto the stream, to look what it doth run, They shall find things, they'd think or wish were done;

They are so natural follies, but so shown,

As even the doers may see, and yet not own.

4 Fortune that favours fools, &c.] We had this expression in Every Man out of his Humour. Jonson seems conscious of the surpassing attractions of this drama: he could not well, indeed, be ignorant of them; and if great merit could justify boasting, (which it cannot,) would need little apology for his bold appeal to the judgment, instead of the candour, of his audience.

5 Howe'er the age &c.] From Livy's preface to his history: Ad hæc tempora, quibus nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus, perventum est.

ACT I. SCENE I.

A Room in Lovewit's House.

Enter FACE, in a captain's uniform, with his sword drawn, and SUBTLE with a vial, quarrelling, and followed by DoL COMMON.

Face. Believe 't, I will.

Sub. Thy worst. I fart at thee.

Dol. Have you your wits? why, gentlemen! for love

Face. Sirrah, I'll strip you

Sub. What to do? lick figs' Out at my

Face. Sirrah, I'll strip you-] "Our poet could not possibly have chosen a happier incident to open his play with. Instead of opening with a dull narration, you have action; and such action too, as cannot possibly be supposed to happen at any other time, than this very present time. Two rogues with their punk, are introduced quarrelling, and just so much of their secrets is discovered to the audience, as is sufficient for the audience at present to know." So far Upton talks judiciously:but when he proceeds to inform the reader that " our learned comedian does not deal in vulgar English here, but in vulgar Attic or Roman expressions, and quotes Aristophanes and Horace, to prove his assertion; it is impossible to suppress a smile at such a ridiculous abuse of learning. The "vulgarity," with the leave of this tasteless idolater of the ancients, is truly English, and had been used to good effect, long before Jonson's time, by numbers of his countrymen, who never heard of the Plutus, or the Ibam forte via.

7 What to do? lick figs &c.] This alludes to a story told by Rabelais. In revenge for an insult offered to the empress by the Milanese, the emperor, Frederic Barbarossa, led her mule into the public square; there "par son ordonnance le bourreau